Fifty-one years after he took over from the unlovely puppet Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro, Cuba's 84-year-old caudillo-for-life and one-time firebrand of world revolution, is beginning to talk sense. The Cuban model is not only not much use for other countries, he says; it doesn't even work for Cuba. The Missile Crisis of 1962? (Hard to believe that he's still around when his then-contemporaries Kennedy and Khruschev belong to a past that seems almost as remote as that of, say, Louis XIV, or women with bustles.) The wiser and sadder Castro allows that his letter to Khruschev urging a nuclear attack on the US wasn't worth the risk. And he lets Li'l Squinty, aka Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have it right between his squinty little eyes with a bold attack on his ghastly anti-Semitism and warmongering.

On the other hand, he also stoutly maintains that Osama Bin Laden was a U.S. Government agent. Oh, well. That's old age for you. Total recall of what you said to X fifty years ago one Tuesday night in June, then you go ahead and try to put your slippers on your head.